Big Flavors from a Small Kitchen

Honor, proprietor of the small London café Chriskitch, and food writer Hutton prove that tiny can indeed be powerful with their debut collection of 100 recipes. The keys to Honor’s success in cooking in a wee space are presentation, surprise ingredients, and simplicity. Nothing is simpler than a salad, and there are many to choose from here. Blue cheese, rosemary, and walnuts are woven between whole slices of apple, giving the salad the appearance of a thick and oozing burger with a stem peeking from its top. Couscous and pumpkin seeds are stuffed into leeks and plated with the leeks upright, little columns of crunch. The chef is a bit of a deconstructionist, most notably in the naming of his recipes, which he calls by their ingredients. So, in Honor-speak, a breakfast sandwich with ground beef, mushrooms, bacon, eggs, and baked beans . Then again, what other name could one possibly give dishes such as calf’s liver–leeks-vanilla-honey or lamb’s tongue–grape molasses–ginger root–star anise? Each dish is accompanied by a full-page, color close-up from photographer Tamin Jones. They are warm and inviting, particularly the image of a mouthwatering gluten-free, cocoa, banana, almond flour cake frosted with dense chocolate curls—which, it turns out, are thickened with avocado. (Mar.)